But heres why revolving your life around these studies is a fools errand.
Just yesterday, we posted about muscle building supplementsthe latest could-be grim reaper.
But this black-and-white approach to food isnt helpful at all.
Instead, it just leads to a common, but pointless, game called life maximization.
Coined by evidence-based advocate,Dr.
…actually theres no other rule.
Now all it’s crucial that you do is wait and hope the game made you live longer.
But this is a really dangerous game to play.
They examinecorrelation, a relationship between two variables that may not have a cut-and-dry explanation.
Thats not to say that correlations couldnt bepotentiallymeaningful.
They simply warrant follow-up studies that further examine causation.
Indeed, they contain a number of important vitamins and minerals, but there are other factors in play.
Again, these are significant factors when it comes to determining lifespan.
Often these studies make it to the mainstream.
A great example of this is a study that found people who eat chocolate tend to be thinner.
Weighty Matters did a pretty goodanalysis of that here.
The result is aconfused set of consumerseager to categorize foods into superfood and cancer-causing killers.
Unfortunately, when the public hears about them, theyll often incorporate them into the health decision making process.
Client:
I drink about 5 sodas per day, but I really like soda.
Could you switch to diet soda?
That would save you about 600 calories a day and youd lose one pound per week.
Not really… Im really worried about the health effects of aspartame and diet soda in general.
Failure to lose weight may very well kill this person.
Theyre focused on the second order problem and not the first order one.
Similarly, perhaps youre trying to avoid dairy, something you love.
Unfortunately you heard somewhere that drinking cows milk is unnatural.
Sure, smart advertising may present certain foods as a one-dimensional, good or bad thing.
But it never is.
Playing this game of life maximization creates a dangerous fallacy: every little thing adds up.
The issue is, we make all these decisions assuming their ramifications occur in isolation.
Its important to differentiate between actual risks, such as smoking, and potential risks like aspartame.
Were not telling you to keep smoking, of course.
Ignoring studies suggesting apotentialhealth risk seems counterintuitive at first, but logically it makes sense.
We all want to live long, healthy lives.
Images bykatiew,UCL Institute of Education,Bernhard Ungerer, andkosmolaut.
